BBC Studios Natural History Unit

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I've come to Bristol, spiritual home of this series, also famously home of the BBC's Natural History Unit.

I'm wandering around some of the images on display.

Polar bears feature heavily behind the producer's desk.

Sir Peter Scott with the elusive Eric Ashby.

In 1963, Eric is our subject on Great Lives Today, and choosing The Silent Watcher is another extremely accomplished cameraman, the author of The Man Who Climbed Trees, James Aldred.

Welcome to the nerve centre of the Natural History Unit and tell us why you've picked Eric Ashby today.

Well, thank you.

The s- the, the, the, the f- being passionate about lichen, does that mean? Yeah, lichoning is a hobby- [laughs] And I encourage everyone to get involved and take it up [laughing].

So make the pitch to the Natural History Unit at the BBC about why we should have a few hours on a Sunday night on lichens.

Absolutely.

Well, a- at nighttime they're even more fascinating because if you take out a ultraviolet light and shine a torch on them, they fluoresce in all of these fantastic colors, and again, it's the secondary metabolites that are in them that make them glow bright red to bright orange to purples.

Jack Richardson is a wildlife and natural history cinematographer who over the last five years has quietly built up a seriously impressive body of work across some of the biggest natural history productions out there.

He's worked extensively with the BBC Natural History Unit, shooting for Springwatch, Winterwatch and Autumnwatch.

as well as working behind the scenes on productions including Wild Arles and Prehistoric Planet.

He's also worked as both a cinematographer and shooting researcher on the Disney Plus and National Geographic series Home, travelling to some pretty extraordinary parts of the world in the process.

But I've had quite an interesting year, kind of building up a few different strings of working with people who maybe need natural history filmmaking.

but aren't the BBC.

So that's quite exciting for me because basically for the last 10 years, it's always been the BBC Natural History Unit.

So it's quite exciting to see new people wanting wildlife filmmaking.